'Midnight Rockets': Whistleblower lawsuit reveals toxic releases by Ohio nuclear plant
According to the suit, the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant "would regularly and purposefully vent raw UF6 [uranium hexafluoride], transuranics, heavy metals, and other toxic chemicals into the atmosphere."
A whistleblower lawsuit filed by former workers at an Ohio nuclear plant has revealed new details about disturbing practices during the plaintiffs' tenures at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant (PORTS), including the alarming process — dubbed "midnight rockets" — of releasing toxic chemicals into the atmosphere. According to the suit, "PORTS would regularly and purposefully vent raw UF6 [uranium hexafluoride], transuranics, heavy metals, and other toxic chemicals into the atmosphere from the roof of the process buildings." Filed against U.S. Department of Energy nuclear fuel contractors on Sept. 3 in the Southern District of Ohio, Eastern Division, Walburn, et al, v. Centrus Energy Corp., et al alleges criminal conduct, gross negligence, poisoning of nuclear workers, and contamination of Ohio communities in Pike, Scioto and neighboring counties with radioactive isotopes, causing cancer clusters, injuries, sickness and death, as well as loss of property values.
After the plant was fully brought online in 1956, PORTS quickly became the single-largest electricity consumer in history. PORTS required massive amounts of electricity in order to process uranium for nuclear bombs through the Cold War, then later on for nuclear power plants. According to the plaintiffs, the amount of government-approved nuclear and chemical wastes discharged by the site to the air, water and soil through intentional releases from 1954 up until the present day was shocking. According to a report from the Lawrence Livermore laboratory, the plant was contaminated with various radioactive materials, including uranium isotopes neptunium and plutonium, and toxic substances — including arsenic, beryllium, and chromium — have been detected. One uranium isotope, uranium-234, is abundant in the PORTS plants and is approximately 10,000 times more radioactive than the plant's profit-generating isotope, uranium-235 (used in nuclear reactor fuel). In a meeting held by the Department of Energy (DOE) at the Comfort Inn in Piketon, Ohio — referred to by local whistleblowers and activists as the "Comfort Inn Hearing" — former Assistant Secretary of Energy David Michaels, admitted: "It is my understanding that the Department of Energy has known since 1953 and 1954 that there was plutonium contamination, not just plutonium, but neptunium and transuranic contamination in the reactor feed that came from, was transferred from Paducah."
When whistleblowers (now plaintiffs) Jeffrey Walburn and Charles "Chick" Lawson worked there, the PORTS plant received shipments which were labeled as either low-enriched uranium or "natural" uranium — both of which were allegedly contaminated with unnatural and highly toxic radioactive isotopes such as plutonium and neptunium. As little as 1/1,000,000 of a gram of plutonium is enough to cause fatalities when ingested or inhaled. The contaminated uranium supply came from foreign countries (particularly Russia) and other U.S. nuclear sites, such as the Honeywell Uranium Conversion facility in Metropolis, Ill. via the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Kentucky. The PORTS plant was built to enrich uranium; it was not built to process plutonium, neptunium, fission products, etc., which were byproducts of recycled uranium from nuclear reactors. However, the suit alleges, contact with plutonium-laced shipments has occurred since the very beginning of PORTS' operations; the discharges and releases occurred in sync with these shipments. According to the suit: "These frequent releases were always done at night, and thus acquired the name 'Midnight Rockets' … These releases carried highly radioactive materials wherever the winds would take them … Security personnel were required to be up on the roof when these unannounced intentional releases were performed, and they would be covered in the escaping materials."
https://justthenews.com/accountability/whistleblowers/midnight-rockets-whistleblower-lawsuit-reveals-toxic-airborne#digital-diary
https://archive.org/details/plutonium-at-ports-since-1953-evidence
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https://ia601403.us.archive.org/16/items/ports-independent-investigation-blue-curtain-document_202009/PORTS-Independent%20Investigation%20-%20Blue%20Curtain%20document.pdf
https://epa.ohio.gov/Portals/35/permits/0IO00000-Fluor-BWXT-Portsmouth.pdf